The Wii U Might end up Being the 'PS1' of its time

The Wii was Nintendo's most successful home console ever. Its nearing 100 million units sold worldwide and pioneered motion control technology for the mainstream consumer. Despite Nintendo's success, a majority of 3rd Party developers did not enjoy the same success Nintendo had selling their games to the fanbase. There is concern that, that trend will continue with Wii U, but like Lee Corso would say "Not so fast my friend". The Wii U is a whole different beast than the Nintendo 64, Gamecube, and Wii. To relegate the Wii U to suffer the same fate is not only premature but an uneducated statement. The Wii U will have many developers developing games for the system, especially Japanese developers. It could actually become the PS1 of the next generation.

Look at Black Ops II on PC and compare to consoles, not a huge difference yet a PC blows away the consoles in specs. Even if the PS4/360 destroy the Wii U in specs it means nothing since any game company can now port to all 3 consoles (unlike the old Wii). We already know the Wii U has some great exclusives, I'm excited to see what the other 2 can pull out :)

Yes it will. The author of the article brought up very good points. Wii U will be the RPG preferred console of choice (that allow will make it own the Jap market). Nintendo is also being very smart with letting developers set their own price for their download content and Nintendo will not charge any fees for developers to distribute patches and DLC content (Microsoft and Sony do) which will make their platform very attractive for developers. Time will tell but I see how one can make that comparison at this early stage.

Maybe SONY & Microsoft will follow Nintendo on the points you mentioned. The way i see it, next PS/Xbox will be 4-5 times powerful than WiiU and it will not have the success the Wii did.

All Sony & Microsoft needs to do is to announce the next gen. consoles right now ( they should have done it earlier tbh ) so people who already own current gen consoles would hold off on buying the WiiU and wait for the next gen consoles.

There may be a kind of precedent for the situation of the WiiU albeit in very different circumstances.

The Sega Saturn sold 9.5 million consoles and its successor , the Dreamcast, sold 10 million consoles. That seems very harsh sales figures on the Dreamcast as, despite some quirky titles, it was aimed at a much broader audience than the Saturn which specialised in fighting games.

Like the WiiU, the Dreamcast was also regarded by some as a mid generation console, lots of people seeming to go along with the Sony idea of 'the generation starts when we say it does'. Actually I think that the N64 squeezing out some great games late in its life may have also contributed to the DC not getting larger sales.

However if the WiiU replicates this kind of situation then it could expect sales slightly larger than the Wii. But there's one thing that might be a large hinderance to this: that the original Wii has been seen by many people in retrospect as a Christmas gimmick circa 2006 - a craze that everyone decided to buy in to, many perhaps knowing that it was only a craze.

The Dreamcast situation suggests that the WiiU will need to impress technologically if it wants to get close to the Wii's sales, that we should no longer see shelf after shelf of mini game type games in HD. I don't think that large numbers of people will settle for anything that looks gimmicky twice in a row.

I think the biggest issue with the DC sales is the no security so you could put a boot CD in and boot copied games very easy and I know a lot of people who picked up a DC just for this and did not buy any games for it.

I think the WiiU will sell as much as the 360/PS3 has and if it manages that it will be fine.

No security on DC would have affected software sales, not console sales. If anything, it would have helped hardware sales (unless stores boycotted it as a result of knowing that they might not sell many games).

But I bet that a sizeable number of people bought the original DC games anyway - it's not like they'd have known loads of people with a DC to get pirated games from.

It's still a relative tragedy for Sega that the Dreamcast, which was evidently as cool as anything, only managed to sell about 500,000 more than the Saturn, whose line up of games was never on the cards to make it a mainstream console.

A big point this author is making is that we'll see a resurgence of the JRPG. Maybe that will be so, if these games are actually localized. In the past (current?) generation there has been a MUCH lower percentage of games being released in every region. Look at Bravely Default, a very popular JRPG for 3DS that still hasn't been announced for release outside of Japan. I'm hoping with digital distribution we'll get some games we wouldn't have otherwise.

I would say 50 million is fair, and would be deemed a success. Obviously it's not going to push 100 million like the Wii, I'd be surprised if any game console puts up numbers like that ever again (in that short of a timeframe too). The Wii U will lose a lot of the casual audience since the system isn't necessarily about pick up and play with it's easy to use controller. The gamepad is amazing, but definitely takes some getting used to, although navigating menus, and communicating on the Miiverse is so much easier with the gamepad. Plus it's very social media driven, with a twitter like feel to the whole thing. Overall I am very happy with the Miiverse so far.

I pretty much agree with with you on the fact that Nintendo lost their severe price advantage that the had with the Wii with a launch price of 250€. With the Wii U priced close to or even surpassing current generation of consoles its a bit more difficult to convince people to pick one up.

I had a Wii at launch due to its price if it wasn´t for that i probably wouldn´t have got one.

P.S I got rid of my Wii a long time ago due to the inability to play well with the way my room is set up. I bought my PS3 with move but due to my room design i cant really play it.

You never know. Nintendo's franchises can bring that number up. Make solid versions of Mario Kart, Zelda, Metroid, and Smash Bros, plus getting more 3rd party content like Monster Hunter, Dragon Quest, and Bayonetta 2..... Look out the Wii U could reach that number. Nintendo can still release Wii Sports 2 and market that to casuals.

I can't believe people really are betting their money on the Wii U. The Wii was successful for its impulse buy/gimmick nature and cheap price. The casuals ate it up. But the casual audience is very fickle and always quickly lose interest to move on to something else, or they see no reason to purchase a new console if their old one is working perfectly fine (that's more the parental attitude really). So you can't bet on the casual audience picking up a Wii U. As for the core audience, they'll be scrutinizing the Wii U for a long time before a good deal of them pick one up, waiting to see if it's just another Wii console but with a tablet controller.

Meanwhile MS, and especially Sony, have less to worry about when it comes to casuals (though MS has been leaning towards catering to that audience to everyone else's detriment including their in house developers) and have an already established reputation with core gamers that almost 100% guarantees that the core audience will be buying MS and Sony's next console.

The Wii U will probably be successful, but it will NOT be Wii successful, or PS1 successful, and definitely not PS2 successful. That I would bet real money on.

For me, MS and Sony have established themselves with bad consumer relations, faulty hardware and uniteresting games full of hideous dlc traps. They are even pushing further ridiculous practices like online passes and adds in paid online services.

So far, nintendo hasn't pulled any of that crap, and is even keeping their 3rd parties in line to stop them goinb overboard. Tekken wiiu for instance HAS NO online pass, while both the 360 and ps3 versions do.

I think there are plenty of people like me loving the no nonsense approach nintendo has, and hopefully keeps, going for it right now.

"For me, MS and Sony have established themselves with bad consumer relations, faulty hardware and uniteresting games full of hideous dlc traps. They are even pushing further ridiculous practices like online passes and adds in paid online services."

-I understand that you wrote this about your own opinion, but you have to understand that half of the things you pointed out here are subjective and the other half are things Nintendo couldn't really do thanks to an almost non-existent online service. That is to say, if the Wii had the same online services as PSN and XBLA, what makes you think Nintendo WOULDN'T use online passes and other such things? I bet with the Wii U you'll see it happen.

"So far, nintendo hasn't pulled any of that crap, and is even keeping their 3rd parties in line to stop them goinb overboard. Tekken wiiu for instance HAS NO online pass, while both the 360 and ps3 versions do."

-Reminds me of their relationship with 3rd party developers in the SNES days where Nintendo had strict rules to follow that many didn't like. You'll find that the bigger 3rd party developers will hold fast to their money grubbing and will most likely either force Nintendo's hand or just prevent their games from appearing on the Wii U.

"I think there are plenty of people like me loving the no nonsense approach nintendo has, and hopefully keeps, going for it right now."

-The console isn't even a week old. Give it time and you'll see Nintendo isn't the saintly company you believe it to be.

For your point on MS and Sony I think price point vs. what is offered is going to be the most important hurdle for them. It sounds like they might be able to launch at a reasonable price point and they will be more powerful in comparison to Wii U. Now there are rumors but until we here official statements it is all up in the air, and if they don't hit the right price point/differentiation from from Wii U combination the extra time the Wii U has could end up being a strong asset. Now of course down the line if the next systems are too expensive they will sell more as price drops but just wondering how they will relate to each other when they are all on the market. I'm going to get all of them at some point unless they are way to expensive.

Not gonna click on the link because of the virus warning, but it's way too early to tell if it will or not. I mean, it's only been 2 days. I would like to see the wiiu in like a year to see how it's doing then make a decision...

Yeah, I dunno what to do about reading the article, cuz I'm not taking the risk, ads blocked or not.

To be honest, there seem to be a lot of issues surrounding the system at the moment. Glued together Wii CPUs, 5GB firmware updates that can potentially brick systems, no replacement game pads... CAN the system be great? Sure. But it's not starting out well.

I thought the Wii was the ps1 of its era... it brought in a whole new market of then "casual" fresh gamers.

The wiiu has launched with a huge library of decent-strong titles and an increased fanbase off the last gen... sounds like a new ps2 to me. Regardless, looking forward to more great games.. hurry up, pikmin! ^0^//

The article brings up some good points and it would be great if it turned out to be true. If the Wii U is the 8th gens home of RPGs/JRPGs then it will be my favourite console this gen, I'm guessing the PS4 and 720's main genre will stick to be the FPS as with this gen.

I agree with this article, no matter how bad the sony and microsoft media bash, this next gen machine, it is going to succeed. and the next ps1? i say hello to the next gen super nintendo. A super sequel to mario world, yes NSMB U just might as well be called that..this is the true sequel to the game..I love it.. hands down, they best 2d mario game since mario world. launched with super nes, NSMB U launched with wii u. this is going to be nintendo time again, as history proves, video game systems rule in 2 cycles, the nes, then the super nes... the ps1, and then the ps2.. now as follows, the wii and now wii u. I am so happy that the wii u is selling out, games and systems both.. the critics, who want nintendo to fail, lost no matter what they say.. the FANS WILL NOT LISTEN!! it's the fans who win... sorry media, you lose again!

You can't rule out anything with Nintendo - their fortunes at different times have gone up and down like nobody's business. The continued success of the original Gameboy against technically superior rivals shows that technology is no barrier to Nintendo's sales. So only having slightly superior technology might not harm them as much as it could have. The worst case scenario is that the WiiU would sell what the Gamecube did (just over 20 million). I think that the best case scenario is about 70-80 million - with PS4 and the next Xbox on the horizon those unknowns will make some people keep hold of their money. Best bet may be anywhere between what the N64 sold (32 million) and 20 million more than that, 52 million.